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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from geek.com: "In 2009, a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine found its way on to Megaupload a month before it was due to appear in movie theaters. The so-called 'workprint' copy was unfinished — so unfinished in fact, anyone viewing this copy saw green screens and wires attached to actors used to help with the more acrobatic movements during action scenes. Hugh Jackman even commented on the leak, describing it as like getting a 'Ferrari without a paint job.' The person who decided to share the movie illegally was tracked down, however. He is a 49-year-old New Yorker by the name of Gilberto Sanchez, and he's just been prosecuted." The New York Times' 2010 interview with Sanchez is a good read, too.

not like he was ripping DVD's to play on his ipod or iphone because the digital copy thing for blu ray is a scam. not like he only watched the stolen copy in his home. he uploaded it so it could be downloaded by others

I think the punishment here is perhaps disproportionate, but I agree with the sentiment. It's far better to go after the people who knowingly share things with widespread audiences than anyone else in the infringement set-up.

So the question becomes... why does a guy that intentionally uploaded this for others, a month before the movie comes out (where I would expect the studio to make a huge chunk of its profit on the movie) only get a year in prison when someone who accidentally shares a few crappy songs gets a financial punishment that makes a year in prison look quite tame?

Judges often don't have leeway in sentencing; Whether it's a "crappy" song or a pre-release of a highly-anticipated motion picture, the law says the punishment is the same. Don't blame the judges for the seemingly random or harsh sentencing... blame the politicians. I mean, I can come over to your house and beat the snot out of you on the way in to work with my bare hands and get less time than this guy did for posting some crappy "work print" movie. Which crime do you think is worse? Worse, downloading that same crappy movie can cause civil penalties far in excess of what I would get if I broke into your house and did something horrible to you (use your imagination)...

Here's the obligatory proportions post. How many people have been arrested for the housing market crash thus far? How much monetary damage did those people actually do in comparison to this guy?... yeah.

Look, I don't really follow the Slashdot party line on this one; I think stealing from artists you respect is stupid, because they won't make you more stuff. And Sanchez was an idiot for uploading this thing from the illegal pirated copy he bought. But his punishment does seem disproportionate, and they still got the wrong guy.

This guy bought stolen goods, and made illegal copies of copyrighted materials. Somebody, somewhere, actually stole the proof from the studio. That is the real crime they should be punishing if they want to stop pre-release pirates. And I won't even bother to point out how effortlessly easy it would be to track copies and identify leaks in this technical audience, because I'm sure you can all come up with half-a-dozen schemes yourselves. If the studios can't be bothered to prevent the leaks or identify and punish the leakers in the first place, why should we care what happens to the leaked materials?

lesson learned, don't upload stolen movies... he uploaded it so it could be downloaded by others

There is one more lesson we have learned. The world is full of assholes who seem to agree with this punishment!
So you do think that 1 year in federal prison after being hunted by FBI is an appropriate punishment for buying a bootleg movie and uploading it? Really? If he at least stole the copy during his employment - there would be a breach of trust/contract violation (why, yes, I read TFA). But he bought and uploaded a bootleg movie.
Only in a cruel asshole world is 1 year in prison plus another year of limited computer access an appropriate punishment for uploading/sharing a movie he didn't even steal. We can argue about some fines (he's not right or anything), but the punishment is very clearly out of proportion. And those cheering it on are part of the problem!

If that's true, then it's one of the biggest perversions of justice I've seen in a long time; I'm not a lawyer, and I realize double jeopardy laws may not cross over from civil to criminal cases, but it's ridiculous to be able to send somebody to jail for stealing your imaginary property, and then be able to sue in another court for the same reason.

I disagree. I think they got one of the right guys. (Note "one of", not "the" right guy). I don't think anybody could reasonably expect that the guy was dealing with an above-the-board transaction. This guy was willfully distributing stuff the he knew (or any reasonable person would have known) wasn't legit.

It is true. The two OJ trials are a well known example. It makes sense because punishing criminals is about some combination of protecting society, rehabilitation, and retribution. It isn't about trying to cure harm caused to the actual victim; whether the victim wants to try that, and whether he'll succeed is up to him, and occurs in a civil trial, and those are all about curing harms (usually via money, for lack of better alternatives).